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Thursday, 6 February 2014

Another thought: We should be giving these letter grades. (After we've read a few more.) Exodus UK is a lot better than than the first two. There's a reasonable battle scene -- with foreshadowing, a Rohmer first! -- and at least two characters with personalities. Or at least the personalities of reasonably well-thought-out characters on The Bold & Beautiful.

And you get nearly to the 100-page mark in EUK before a world leader -- for NO REASON AT ALL -- announces that he has made his mind up about the book's key issue, but won't say what he's decided. Rohmer's three-for-three on that one.

Not really related, but did you ever notice, on Star Trek -- any of the Star Treks -- whenever the captain is away from the bridge, and something happens on the bridge, they call him and say:

CREWPERSON (V.O.)
Captain?

CAPTAIN
Captain here.

CREWPERSON (V.O.)
Captain, you'd better come see this.

CAPTAIN
I'll be right there.

(Pulls boots on over velour clamdiggers. Exits.)

Often klaxons are going off.

But why don't they tell him what it is he has to see? Wouldn't that be better? He could think about it in the turbo lift. Get a start on a plan.

Now that I think of it, it also happens whenever the captain is on the bridge and gets a call from the doctor.

DOCTOR (V.O.)
Captain?

CAPTAIN
Y'ello.

DOCTOR (V.O.)
You'd better come down to sickbay and see this.

And off he goes.

Speaking of science fiction -- and grading Rohmer -- have you guys ever read The Space Traders by Derrick Bell? Some politicians deal with a crisis, and what follows makes horrible sense. And you read it and think: Yeah, that sounds about right. Those guys would phone those guys. That's what they'd suggest, and that would be what they'd do, and that's what would happen after that. And it's about something important -- the author has a political point to make -- and it goes somewhere really dark. It's -- what's the nice way to say this? -- better than Richard Rohmer.

Hey, here's a link:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/readings/BellSpaceTraders.pdf

So let's call it an A+. As an example of the kind of story where the atmosphere in the Oval Office of the White House is tense. Let's call Transformers: Dark of the Moon an F.